"Yes: for though Pym and Peters had never seen the exiled lover, they
recognized Lilama; and even they could surmise the rest.

"'The youth is mad,' said the Duke. 'We must rescue our darling from the
maniac.'

"Pym, in his impatience, was about to rush from the room; but the old
man beckoned for him to approach. He did as desired. Then the aged man
placed a hand upon Pym's head, and drew it down to him; and the man who
had lived thousands of years whispered some words into the ear of the
youth who had lived not yet four lustrums. As Peters described for me in
his homely way the change that came over the face of Pym as that human
millenarian spoke perhaps one hundred words into the young man's ear, I
was reminded of reading as a boy, some years ago, a description of the
burning somewhere in South America of a great cathedral. The fire
occurred during a morning service, and with the alarm the doorways of
the building were at once obstructed by a mass of struggling humanity.
Some two or three thousand persons were consumed in this terrible
holocaust. The correspondent who wrote the description of the fire of
which I speak said that for ten minutes he stood outside the cathedral
after the surrounding heat had become so intense that efforts at rescue
ceased, and from a raised spot he looked through the windows from which
the glass had crumbled--looked across the great window-sills raised
eight feet from the cathedral floor, looked into the faces of the
doomed. And as he gazed, he saw the faces of many maidens with their
lovers by their side--(it was a gala day, and all were in their best
attire). As he looked, within a brief ten minutes he saw horror-stricken
eyes gaze at the approaching fire, and at other victims sixty feet away
already burning; then quickly would the fire approach the owner of those